KARACHI: Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Ali Zaidi and Chief Minister of Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah have penned letters to Prime Minister Imran Khan after a verbal clash in a meeting regarding Karachi Transformation Plan a week earlier.
The information of the incident surfaced on Saturday after the letter written by the chief minister came to the forefront.
“That on January 16, another meeting of the committee took place at the Chief Minister House, Karachi. However, towards the end of the meeting, Zaidi acted in a hostile and belligerent manner towards the undersigned [CM Murad] in the presence of the committee…,” said the letter.
The letter further stated that “Zaidi’s unruly behaviour, which under no stretch of imagination can be deemed as one expected from a federal minister, was ignored”.
The province’s top executive further complained to the premier that “this is clearly not the first time, Zaidi has shown such arrogance and belligerence at public forums, which is unbecoming of any citizen let alone a federal minister”.
Registering his protest against Zaidi’s behaviour through the letter, Murad expressed hope that the Prime Minister Office will take some action, and in future, maturity (to some extent) will be seen as merit for appointments at such positions.
On the other hand, Zaidi, in a series of tweets on Saturday, presented his side of the story. He said he has written a letter to the prime minister after a verbal clash with the Sindh chief minister during the Karachi Transformation Plan meeting on January 16.
The federal minister said that Murad had the audacity to write to the PM and his letter shows nothing but arrogance and conceit. “He does not even have the etiquette and manners on how to address the office of the prime minister,” he said.
Zaidi complained in his letter that six months have been passed since the formation of the Karachi Transformation Plan committee, but the Sindh CM is not answerable to anyone.
He said that during the meeting, he requested the CM to include the devolution of organisations, like SBCA and SWWMB, to divisional levels as committed by him months ago. “The CM replied by saying three times that he is not answerable to me. So if Shah felt he was not even answerable to elected members of the National Assembly from his province, then there was no further need for me to waste my time sitting in that meeting. I walked out,” Zaidi said.
Zaidi further said that a high-powered committee of federal and provincial ministers, CM, NDMA chairman and heads of various law enforcement agencies held multiple meetings just to discuss how to clean garbage from storm drains and remove encroachments all because of a corrupt provincial government, which had looted for decades.
Talking to the reporters, Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani expressed concerns on making the letter available to the media.
Ghani said that the Sindh government has always acted responsibly and no statement was made by the provincial government on the verbal clash between the two officials.
Ghani asked for removal of Zaidi from the cabinet as well as Karachi Transformation Plan committee and said that everyone knows about political non-seriousness of Zaidi.
